Objectively Speaking
by AntipodeanOpaleye
Summary: “It’s a lovely dress. Objectively speaking.” Tony takes Pepper her drink at the Fire Fighters’ Family Fund Benefit. Movieverse.


**Title:** Objectively Speaking

**Author:** AntipodeanOpaleye

**Rating:** PG

**Disclaimer:** Everything you recognize from any other source either doesn't belong to me or is a purely coincidental occurrence. Anything that you've never seen probably belongs to me. I write for enjoyment and no copyright infringement is intended.

**Summary:** "It's a lovely dress. Objectively speaking." Tony takes Pepper her drink at the Fire Fighters' Family Fund Benefit. Movieverse.

**A/N:** Because I couldn't get this sort of 'what if" out of my head. I'm not sure I quite captured the sort of tone I imagined Tony might have here, somewhere between his usual snark and something more serious, but I tried. And that's what counts. For the **pepperony100** Prompt #5 – Blue.

* * *

"It's not ridiculous, you know."

There are two vodka martinis in his hands, the dirty one in his right, and half-gone. He considers handing her that one, but thinks better of it in the end.

"It's what?" She wraps long, elegant fingers around the stem of the proffered glass, eyeing Tony suspiciously as he sips again at his drink; it's lasted long enough already, too long by his standards, and he wants to put it aside, to be rid of it. He doesn't want to hide behind the drink in his hand when he talks to her; not tonight.

"Ridiculous. It's not, I mean," he quickly amends, tracing the outline of her silhouette and cursing the swallow of alcohol left in his cocktail glass. "Not ridiculous."

"What isn't?" She hasn't even tasted her drink yet.

"The dress," he concedes, moving so he can see both her front and back at the same time, though her entire left side is rendered invisible to him. "The back of the dress. The dress as a whole, in fact." He wants her to smile at that, and she does, but the victory is hollow – she hides the curve of her mouth behind the lip of her glass. "You look beautiful. The dress looks beautiful. The dress looks beautiful on you. It's a lovely dress. Objectively speaking." He's rambling, he knows he is, but there's so much skin, _her_ skin, and it's glowing in the moonlight, in the filtered beams from the ballroom inside, and he can barely keep himself from falling without grabbing onto the outcropping of the wall nearby. "Not that _you_ don't look beautiful, but the dress; it's a really nice dress. Both you and the dress look very nice."

"How much have you had to drink this evening, Tony?"

He wonders if he's blushing; knows he wouldn't feel it. "Not nearly enough, apparently."

She giggles quietly, and before she reigns it in under the pretense of propriety, it is enough; the most beautiful sound in the world. "Well, thank you, Mr. Stark. From me and the dress."

He smiles at her, mirroring the expression that won't die on her lips, and things feel lighter; the haze from the smokers a hundred feet away doesn't even exist, the carbon of the city, that follows no matter how far up you go, has finally be escaped. "Indeed, it seems that I have impeccable taste," he pauses, and the curl of his lips matches the meniscus of the bowl on his glass as he downs the last of his martini. "In just about everything."

Her cheeks burn at the tone of his voice – which was unintentional, he swears it – and it's only after a long strand of moments that he can tear his gaze away from the flush beneath her skin to focus on something else, something inconsequential. "Enough olives for you?"

"No."

He doesn't even blink. "Good."

She's mid-sip when he snatches the mostly-full cocktail glass from her grip and balances it on a nearby ledge. "Dance with me." She's caught between his arms before he even makes his request, which they both know is more a statement, bordering on a demand.

She's stiff beneath his palms as they curve against the contours of her shoulders. "I don't often make the same mistake twice, Mr. Stark." Her eyes are hard, and he doesn't like that. Not at all.

"There's no one here to see."

She smiles sadly, and it's almost worth the melancholy just to see the grin, but not quiet. "There's always someone there to see."

His hands move without prelude to her hips, slowly forcing her heeled toes toward. "Well, lucky for you, we can easily remedy that. It is my benefit, after all. I could just tell them all to leave."

"No, you couldn't." The despondence of her smile lifts a bit, because she knows her words aren't infallibly true. Not with him, at least. Never with him.

"I could close the bar." They both know that's a viable option.

"Tony…"

"I could conveniently lean my arm a little too close to the fire alarm." He eyes a nearby block of red next to the archway leading back indoors with a sort of sensual longing. "_Very_ accidentally, of course."

"Somehow, I wouldn't put it past you."

He sighs, slinking his right hand to the small of her back, the left still clutching the sharp jut of her hip beneath the silky material of her evening gown, his fingers dancing along the protrusion. "If I had them all arrested and incarcerated indefinitely, would you reconsider?"

The arch of her eyebrow, just like that, was to die for, and his mouth went so dry that it almost distracted him from the words that followed. "What do you think?"

"So it's me you object to, and not the dancing?"

She shakes her head, breaking eye contact. "Something like that." She doesn't want to see the hurt in his eyes, because she knows it will be there, and when his hands fall from her waist, from her arms, any lingering doubt of it is dispelled.

"Tony… I…." She tries and fails, and sweeps past him without another word, not expecting the quick reflexes that catch her wrist in strong, nimble fingers and pull her back against his chest, arms wrapped tighter where they'd been only moments before, barring no further argument.

"It ends in a two," he mummers as they start to sway against her will, or maybe not.

"A two?"

"My social security number. Ends in a two."

"Huh."

They're moving, something between a bona-fide waltz, though much slower, and the pointless, groping swinging that is infamously typical of a high school prom. "There's no music."

His eyes don't leave hers, and she doesn't know whether to revel in it, or hide from it. "Never stopped me before." He isn't bothered.

And somehow, suddenly, neither is she. "I'm sure it hasn't."

She gives in to his lead, and tries her best to pretend that no one is around, that they are the only people who exist in the whole world, and that it won't matter come morning, but she's never been a very good liar. "What I'm not so sure of, is being just another in a long line of girls to sway with you on a balcony without a song."

His eyes flash, and she winces against her will, noticing immediately when his hand clutches hers a little tighter as he spins them in a different direction. "Well, you needn't worry about that."

"Really?" She's not convinced.

"Certainly not. I have never once danced with a woman on a balcony without music."

"Somehow I doubt that." She feels bad about feeling bitter, but that doesn't make a difference.

"Are you implying something about my credibility, Miss Potts?" She can't tell if he's hiding a grin or a grimace behind the question, and for the first time, she's apprehensive about finding out.

"Wouldn't dream of it, Mr. Stark." He relaxes, and she schools her voice to be nothing more than blasé as she continues on with what she knows doesn't need to be said, but she cannot stop herself from adding.

"Yet, I do seem to recall a number of instances in which you did a little more than just dance on a balcony with one of your lady friends. The Maxim models come to mind. Misses January and October in particular." They may have been November and April, for all either of them remembered, but that wasn't the point.

"There was music on those occasions. I definitely recall music." In his head, he's hearing Hendrix, though it's hazy and may have been his imagination. He doesn't remember much of those days anymore.

"Funny. I don't." Pepper is sure of it.

"Well, even giving you the benefit of the doubt," he nods, though as she brushes against him she can feel how tight his chest is, how taut the muscles are, "it hardly matters either way."

"Doesn't it?" She hates the way her voice breaks on the second syllable. _Hates_ it.

"Not in the slightest." He surprises her by shifting his hands and dipping her; she swallows a squeak because his hold is strong and sure and when her neck approaches the ground and her hair drops off her shoulders to dangle with the pull gravity, she suddenly knows he'll pull her back up. "Because while I may have danced with a few girls here and there whilst lacking a good beat that was easily danced to…"

He rights her, and they stop moving, his hand clutching hers like a lifeline, though she doesn't think he knows it. "I told _you_ that I'd never danced with a _woman_ on a balcony before this very night. And that, my dear Pepper, is the honest to God truth."

He smiles softly at her, tucking some of her hair behind her ear as he whispers, "Cross my heart, and hope to die."

And strangely, that hits too close to home for her.

"It's an eight, actually." Her voice is low as she backs away from him.

"Hmm?" He's confused, and she cannot stand that she's doing this, but there's no other choice because it's cold and she's shivering (and they're not related, though she wishes they were), and she's gone before she's out of sight, leaving him behind like he's nothing when that's anything but true.

"Your social ends in an eight."


End file.
